Salt and Light

The church went away for a long weekend to a big house by the sea. The adults had some time together each day for teaching and discussion on Matthew 5, whilst children and youth broke away for their own related sessions. The children were  fortunate to have a wonderful space for their sessions, and I wish I had have got a photo of the whole room (shame about the busy carpet). The other fortunate thing was it was situated next to the main meeting/ communal space so was utilised  at all times and the children independently accessed the play space over and over and the craft supplies were used constantly to make a range of things, related to the stories and also to make boats to sail on the pond! Which brought up lots of boat, bible story discussions (we have been doing those in children's church, so good to act it out in reality)

 

First sessions we looked at the Salt and light passages (Matt 5:13-16) We started the session hiding glow sticks in a darkened room and children finding them. The children LOVED this but a huge mistake to do this at a beginning of the session, who knew just what an exciting activity this was for children but cue VERY lively children who were already excited to be at the seaside!!!!!
And it was a good activity (for the end of a session!)

Here are the rest of the activities we had available relating to Salt and light (some of these were left for the course of the weekend)

Projector with a clear tray of salt to draw images on that would project onto ceiling - this was great shame aboutI didn't get any photos. The other warning on this one is needs to be done near windows as there was a lot of fine salt dust coming off this!!

Dark Den with light up toys and glow sticks

I came in to find this note written by one of the children, who had removed all the light toys leaving a dark empty space (we later talked about a world without Jesus, being like the darkness)

Ingredients for making play dough (which was supposed to be black, we used a whole tube of colouring!!!)

This is an eye shape about use Looking for the light/ seeing the light!

We had a glitter fest, the glitter was supposed to symbolise the light in the darkness of the play dough.

One child asked why we had glitter and I started to say that it was like the light, and one of the children said because I think it means Christians are supposed to sparkle!!!

One of the children asked to make a world, so we made some green and blue play dough...

And some people out of pipe cleaners, they were going to be lighting up the world! On the top there is a massive gem, I enquired what that was thinking it may be profound and it was (in a different way to what I was thinking) Thats where Father Christmas lives!!!! Oh I love children!

Salt dough for making  holders.

Candle holders in the process

Light houses (paper cups with electrical tape, and a battery operated candle) I love the variations and individual twists! The man on top of the white and green one is Jesus, and the words on the top say "Jesus Light of the World"

 Salt and Ice painting. I froze bowls of ice and provided salt to sprinkle on and food colouring. When you sprinkle the ice it cracks and melts and when you pain it the food colouring spreads into the cracks making beautiful patterns...until you use the salt to attempt to melt the ice then you have lots of fun, a mess, wet floor and a good understanding of the power of salt.

For snack we made pop corn and had salt and shake crisps, first we tried without salt and then added salt, everyone decided they preferred it with salt! I will post tomorrow about our general conclusions about salt and light and what we thought Jesus meant by being salt and light in the world!